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Tuesday, 9 November 2010

A great Yarmouth accent

REMEMBER I was trying to discover if the town of Great Yarmouth still has a distinctive accent? At the time I sent a quick email off to FOND – Friends of Norfolk Dialect. Today I had a response from Peter Trudgill – the author of a book on the county’s lingo as well as countless others on dialect, accent and sociolinguistics.

“The Yarmouth accent certainly used to be somewhat distinct from that of the surrounding countryside,” he told me. “Unlike the rural accents, for instance, it resembled Norwich in having h-dropping. And when I did some research about this - in the 1970s - Lowestoft had a rather different accent again - for example the vowel in words such as coal, boat was different from the Yarmouth version.”

I feel the need to go and do some research of my own, particularly in those great old-fashioned boozers (like the Tudor Tavern, pictured) that Yarmouth seems to specialise in.

The Book

The Blog

The blog started as a way of publicising Steve's book on the Wherryman's Way which was published by Halsgrove in 2010. Then it became a way of updating Wherryman's Way walkers. More recently it has spread its wings to the wider Broads. Around 1000 people take a look every month. Steve is now writing a second book provisionally called Riverside Norwich. You can follow his progress on that project here.

The Walk

The Wherryman's Way runs for 35 miles between Norwich and Great Yarmouth, following the route the wherries used to take along the rivers Wensum and Yare. Six years ago I was sitting in the White Horse, Chedgrave wondering why no-one had written a book about it. A few pints later my mates had convinced me I was the man. It was published in May 2010.

Footpath Closures:

Work repairing flood defences means sections of the walk can be closed for months at a time. Get the latest info here.